Research Infrastructures (RIs) are facilities, resources and related services that are used by the research communities to conduct research and foster innovation in their fields.
Users of Research Infrastructures can be individuals, teams and institutions from academia, business, industry and public services (*).
The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures – ESFRI (established in 2002 to support a coherent approach to policy-making on RIs in Europe), identifies RIs of pan-European interest meeting the long-term needs of Europe’s research communities across all scientific areas.
(*) European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures, principles and guidelines for access and related services.
Indicated below are some of the Research Infrastructures that may be of interest to researchers in the translational cancer research area.
The ESFRI landmarks (successfully implemented projects that are delivering science services or effectively advancing in their construction):
BBMRI ERIC: Biobanking and BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure
The main purpose of BBMRI-ERIC is to establish, operate and develop a pan-European distributed research infrastructure of biobanks and biomolecular resources in order to facilitate the access to resources as well as facilities and to support high quality biomolecular and medical research.
Members: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Observer Countries: Cyprus, Switzerland, Turkey and IARC/WHO.
EATRIS ERIC: European Advanced Translational Research Infrastructure in Medicine
The EATRIS infrastructure provides researchers and companies with a support on advanced knowledge and technology that are required to boost new products through the translational maze, from target validation to early clinical trials.
Members: Latvia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
ECRIN ERIC: European Clinical Research Infrastructure
The main activity of ECRIN is the provision of support for the management of multinational clinical trials. Support is primarily provided during implementation, but also for preparation and protocol evaluation.
Members: France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal and Spain.
Observer Countries: Czech Republic and Switzerland.
ELIXIR: A distributed infrastructure for life-science information
The goal of ELIXIR is to orchestrate the collection, quality control and archiving of large amounts of biological data produced by life science researchers. It coordinates, integrates and sustains bioinformatics resources across its member states and enables users in academia and industry to access vital services for their research.
Members: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, EMBL-EBI, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and UK.
Observer Country: Greece.
INFRAFRONTIER: European Research Infrastructure for the generation, phenotyping, archiving and distribution of mouse disease models
INFRAFRONTIER provides access to mouse models, data and scientific platforms and services needed to unravel the functional role of the genome in human health and disease.
Members: Germany, France, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).
Partners: Austria; Belgium; Canada; Czech Republic; Denmark; Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Israel; Italy; Portugal; Spain; Sweden; United Kingdom, Canada.
INSTRUCT ERIC: Integrated Structural Biology Infrastructure
INSTRUCT is a distributed European infrastructure whose task is to provide peer-reviewed open access for users to a broad integrated palette of state-of-the-art structural biology infrastructure, thus promoting innovation in biomedical science and facilitating high impact research.
Members: Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, France, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom.
The ESFRI new projects:
EU-OPENSCREEN: European Infrastructure of Open Screening Platforms for Chemical Biology
EU-OPENSCREEN aims to progress the discovery of biologically active substances in all areas of the Life Sciences by providing transnational open access to the most advanced technologies, chemical and biological resources, and expertise and harnessing the rich chemistry knowledge of Europe in a common compound collection to advance the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms of complex biological phenomena.
Members: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain and Sweden.
EURO-BIOIMAGING: European Research Infrastructure for Imaging Technologies in Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Euro-BioImaging provides open physical user access to a broad range of state-of-the-art technologies in biological and biomedical imaging for life scientists. In addition, it will offer image data support and training for infrastructure users and providers.
Members: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Netherlands, United Kingdom and EMBL.
ISBE: Infrastructure for Systems Biology Europe
The ISBE Infrastructure aims to provide interconnected centres of technological excellence in systems biology. This has the objective, via a single entity, to make available the best European research expertise – together with the experimental and modelling facilities necessary for systems biology.
Members: United Kingdom, Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, Germany, Finland, Norway, Czech Republic, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, Italy.
See also:
CORBEL: Coordinated Research Infrastructures Building Enduring Life-science Services
A project aimed to establish a collaborative and sustained framework of shared services between the ESFRI Biological & Medical RIs and to create a platform for harmonised user access to biological and medical technologies, biological samples and data services required by cutting-edge biomedical research. The CORBEL consortium comprises 35 individual partner institutions from 11 ESFRI Biological and Medical Sciences Research Infrastructures (BMS RI). These 11 RIs joined their scientific capabilities and services to transform the understanding of biological mechanisms and accelerate its translation into medical care.
The CORBEL Catalogue of Services is the first tool to list the main services of all these RIs at a glance and it aims to facilitate the utilisation of RI services by researchers from all over the world.
ECaDE: Early Cancer Detection Europe
The ECaDE initiative, led by EATRIS, offers support to improve the R&D pipeline specifically focused on the development of promising biomarkers for early cancer detection and differentiation of indolent from aggressive lesions.
Members: Latvia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
MERIL: Mapping the European Research Infrastructures
The MERIL database is an inventory of openly accessible research infrastructures (RIs) in Europe of more-than-national relevance across all scientific domains comprising Biological and Medical Sciences, Information Science and Technology.
